1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle management system and, more particularly, to such a vehicle management system installed in a vehicle having a global positioning system and a wireless communication device. When the vehicle entered or moved away from a specific road (for example, a freeway, highway, toll bridge, . . . ), the on-vehicle wireless communication device logs in or out on a remote control center, for enabling the remote control center to achieve various management controls, including traffic volume controlling, ETC (electronic toll collection), stolen car tracking, motorcade managing, . . . and etc.
2. Description of Related Art
In a conventional freeway, solid toll stations are installed at a predetermined pitch along the way. When passing through a toll station, vehicle drivers must slow down the speed and pay the toll fee. This toll collection method affects traffic flow rate, and interferes with safety driving. Further, this manual toll collection method is of low efficiency.
Thereafter, infrared wireless electronic toll collection systems were developed. An infrared wireless electronic toll collection system is to install infrared transceivers in solid toll stations along the way, which infrared transceiver deduct the toll fee from the prepaid apparatus of the on-vehicle unit of the vehicle passed the solid toll station by means of an infrared transmission. The method of using an infrared wireless electronic toll collection system in a specific road to collect toll fee still hinders the traffic flow rate and driving safety because the solid toll station having infrared transceivers extends transversely across the freeway and vehicles must slow down the speed when passing the toll station. Building such solid toll stations across a specific road requires a big investment, and takes a long time. Further, it is neither reasonable nor convenient to ask vehicle owners to prepay money for the amount registered in the prepaid apparatus of the on-vehicle unit in advance. The high installation cost of the on-vehicle prepaid apparatus does not encourage vehicle owners to install.
There is known another freeway toll collection system, which requires a solid control station in every entrance gateway and a solid toll station in every exit gateway. Because too many solid control stations and solid toll stations are required to be managed, and the installation time is long, the management cost is high.
The aforesaid three prior art methods can only collect toll fee on vehicles running on the freeway. They do not provide any other management controls such as traffic volume control, stolen car tracking control, motorcade managing control . . . and etc.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a vehicle management system that eliminates the aforesaid problems.
The main object of the present invention has been accomplished under the circumstances in view. It is the main object of the present invention to provide a vehicle management system, which is to be installed in vehicles for enabling a remote control center to execute various management controls on vehicles running on specific roads. It is another object of the present invention to provide a vehicle management system for installation in vehicles, which is used with global position information to set up an electronic toll collection system. To achieve these and other objects of the present invention, the vehicle management is installed in a vehicle, comprising a global positioning module adapted to compute a current position information of the vehicle; wireless communication means; memory means, the memory means having stored therein the global position information of at least one entrance checkpoint and at least one exit checkpoint; and processor means adapted to compare the current positions information of the vehicle to the global position information of the at least one entrance checkpoint and to control the wireless communication means to send an entrance information representing a matched entrance checkpoint and the identification code of the vehicle wirelessly to the remote control center for log-in when the comparison matched, the processor means also being adapted to compare the current position information of the vehicle to global position information of the at least one exit checkpoint and to control the wireless communication means to send an exit information representing a matched entrance checkpoint and the identification code of the vehicle wirelessly to the remote control center for log-out when the comparison matched. Subject to the long-in/log-out time and/or location information of vehicles on a specific road, the remote control center can execute a variety of management controls including traffic volume control, electronic toll collection control, stolen car tracking control, motorcade managing control, and etc. The present invention need not to install a solid toll station on the road so as to save the installation time and cost.
The remote control center can be made having a schedule rating database having stored therein a toll collection rating, so that the remote control center can compute the toll fee of every vehicle passing through the specific road according to the toll collection rating. The toll collection rating can be a schedule rating table or mileage based toll rating formula.
Theoretically, it needs only to compare the longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates when comparing the global position coordinates of every checkpoint. In order to improve the accuracy, a DGPS receiver may be added to the vehicle to receive. DGPS differential data from DGPS reference stations spread anywhere, so that the GPS module (or on-vehicle processor) of the vehicle can use the received differential data to proofread and to improve the current position coordinates of the vehicle accurately. The differential data can be collected in advance by the remote control center from DGPS reference stations anywhere, and then sent from the remote control center wirelessly to the wireless communication means of the vehicle in the way of short-message, digital broadcasting, . . . and etc.
The identification code of the vehicle can be the license number, engine number, ID card number of the vehicle owner, credit card number of the vehicle owner, bank account number of the vehicle owner, or any equivalent code number representative of the identity of the vehicle or the vehicle owner.
The global positioning module can be a GPS module. Alternatively, the positioning technique of using three mobile telephone base stations to identify a position, or any of a variety of equivalent global positioning techniques may be used.
The wireless communication means can be a GPRS module, GSM module, CDMA module, 3C module, blue tooth module, or any of a variety of equivalent wireless communication modules.
The memory means can be fixed on board such as a hard diskdrive, a memory card, a ROM, a RAM, or any of a variety of equivalent fixed memory devices. Preferably, the memory means is a flash memory card. The memory means can also be a removable floppy diskdrive, a removable memory card, or any of a variety of equivalent removable memory devices, preferably, a portable IC memory card.
Other objects, advantages, and novel features of an invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.